Justice Department unveils 'largest takedown ever' to combat Medicare fraud

[Eugene]

Source: Reuters

Politics | Wed Jun 22, 2016 11:44am EDT

Justice Department unveils 'largest takedown ever' to combat Medicare fraud

WASHINGTON | BY SARAH N. LYNCH

The U.S. Justice Department said Wednesday that federal law enforcement officials have hit a milestone in 2016 by completing the "largest takedown ever" against defendants allegedly trying to defraud Medicare and other federal insurance programs.

The 2016 takedown involves 301 defendants and a loss amount of $900 million, the department said. That exceeds a record last year, when 243 defendants faced charges in a combined $712 million in losses.

Among the defendants charged in the takedown include two owners of a group of outpatient clinics and a patient recruiter who stand accused of filing $36 million in fraudulent claims for physical therapy and other services that were not medically necessary.

To find patients, the Justice Department alleges the clinic operators and the recruiter targeted poor drug addicts and offered them narcotics so they could bill them for services that were never provided.

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Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-medicare-fraud-idUSKCN0Z81C8

[merrily]

1. Take this in: ONLY TWO cases of Medicare fraud caused losses of over $1.6 billion

It's great that they got them, but how long were they operating fraudulently before losses hit that amount? I hope someone is working to figure out how this type of thing might be detected before losses are in the high hundreds of millions of dollars.

Odd that the story contains no names at all (except for North Carolina).

[underpants]

2. They are also hot and heavy after pharmaceutical charities

Top priority of the US Atty of Massachusetts